Dallas faces surge in pedestrian deaths amid car-centric culture

Aresly Jaramillo was standing at the intersection of Elam Road and Cedarcliff Drive when she attempted to cross a six-lane road. The road, however, did not have a crosswalk.
She was struck by a Dallas Police vehicle while attempting the six-lane intersection and the following day passed away due to her injuries.
Jaramillo’s family intends on filing a claim against the Dallas Police Department, with the potential for it to become a lawsuit. The family initially asked for a higher settlement but lowered the amount for changes to the dangerous traffic patterns, lack of pedestrian walkways and ongoing speed violations in the neighborhood.
Since 2018, pedestrian fatalities and injuries have only continued to increase in Dallas — a trend that caught notice from the Federal Highway Safety Administration, which named it a “focus city,” highlighting the need to address pedestrian safety and traffic collisions.
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As of Aug. 19, there have been a total of 381 pedestrian-involved crashes in 2024, 41 of which were fatal, according to the Vision Zero Dallas dashboard — nine more injuries than counted at the same time last year.
The trend goes back years. In 2016, Dallas County had the fourth highest number of pedestrian fatalities nationwide, according to a Texas A&M study. A 2015 Dallas Police public safety committee brief report recognized the pedestrian fatalities and worked to enhance signage such as crosswalks, yield signs and street signals.
But the problem is not unique to Dallas. Nationally, pedestrian deaths hit an all-time high in 2022. For the first time since 2020, the number of pedestrian deaths in the United States dropped this year.
“Serious crashes are preventable, and no one should be killed or seriously injured on our roads,” Dev Rastogi, the city’s assistant manager, wrote in a July 2024 city memorandum.
To combat the ongoing problem, Dallas launched its Vision Zero project in 2022, representing a significant step toward attention on pedestrian safety. The original concept of Vision Zero, tasking cities to eliminate all traffic collisions to zero, originated in Sweden during the 1990s.
For Dallas, the city aims to reduce severe injury crashes by 50% by 2030, including pedestrian accidents. The comprehensive plan involves a combination of tackling infrastructure, education and enforcement shortcomings to create safer roads for everyone.
“The whole purpose of this is to shift the approach and how we address traffic safety in all departments, not just transportation,” said Paula Blackmon, a councilwoman for District 9. “The whole point is every life is precious and we don’t want to lose it to a senseless traffic accident.”
In May 2024, Blackmon partnered with Dallas Police Chief Eddie Garcia to address speeding in a PSA video.
“My big thing is that we need to reduce speed limits,” Blackmon said, explaining how speed is the biggest issue when it comes to fatalities of pedestrians and overall road safety in Dallas.
Street design can allow for cars to travel at faster speeds, but can also be the solution to slowing vehicles down naturally. When cars are allowed to move faster, the severity of a pedestrian’s injuries skyrocket.
The average risk of severe injury for a pedestrian is 10% at an impact speed of 16 mph and jumps to 90% at nearly 50 mph, according to a 2011 study by the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety.
In a June 2024 city council meeting, seventh grader Julian Romero explained the stark difference between how fast the cars move in his neighborhood in District 4 and where his mom works — where there are “lots of sidewalks and not many stray dogs or cats.”
“It’s a great city, but there are still some problems,” Romero said about his neighborhood. “It’s on a hill, there’s no sidewalks and there are a lot of stray cats. And the cars behind my house go way too fast.”
Krista Nightengale is the founder of Better Block, a nonprofit that will set up temporary urban design changes to be tested by the community. Some of their projects have involved finding ways to reduce speeding for pedestrians, like adding bike lanes to roads.
Every once in a while, she’ll play a “strange” game with her husband.
The prompt: If you had all the money in the world to spend on one thing, what issue would you tackle?
Her responses change between housing and education, but sometimes, she said, it’s sidewalks.
Sidewalks are more than concrete paths; they are critical to pedestrian safety, Nightengale said, slowing down cars and providing a safe place for people to walk.
“I think if we start to tweak the infrastructure, then that is sending cues that we’re taking into account multimodal safety, we’re taking into account pedestrian safety, we’re taking into account ways in which people navigate streets,” Nightingale said.
In response to safety concerns over the years, the Dallas Sidewalk Master Plan was established in June 2021 to prioritize sidewalk projects based on equity, requests and pedestrian safety. Funded with $30 million, the plan concentrates on 12 “focus areas,” or neighborhoods to receive pedestrian-related improvements.
However, it has been difficult to assess the plan’s effectiveness. A July 2024 memorandum from the city indicates that completing the plan is part of other pedestrian safety projects and initiatives costing an estimated $3 billion.
Some advocates said Texas has consistently prioritized road expansion despite the escalating toll of pedestrian fatalities. Billions of dollars have been funneled into widening roads and repairing aging freeway infrastructure, compared to the recent near $21 million federal grant towards pedestrian safety initiatives.
Even though only 2% of Dallas residents walk to work, pedestrians account for 30% of traffic deaths in the city, according to a 2022 City of Dallas study.
“We are spending most of the money on the perception of being able to drive fast and to clear congestion in Texas,” said Jay Blazek Crossley, the executive director of Farm & City, a nonprofit that leads Vision Zero Texas.
While these projects aim to improve traffic flow and safety, Crossley explains they often prioritize the quick commute for vehicles over the protection of pedestrians and cyclists. He added projects that propose changes such as narrowing lanes benefits everyone.
“This isn’t some kind of situation where it’s pedestrians versus drivers,” said Crossley. “We’re actually all in this together and it’s these improvements that will make it safer when you’re driving.”
Serving on the Dallas Area Rapid Transit board of directors and teaching urban development at Southern Methodist University, Patrick Kennedy moved to Dallas 22 years ago with a goal — to walk to work.
While he eventually achieved this, he admits it wasn’t “the safest nor most pleasant walk in the world.”
Kennedy also said that there are hidden “subsidies” in the city’s policy that encourages driving and road design decisions that prioritize cars over pedestrians.
“It’s basically because we prioritize the car in almost every form of policy from low-density zoning to evaluating streets based on vehicular level of service and how much travel delay there might be only for drivers,” he said.
The action for better pedestrian safety isn’t just about reducing accidents; it has a capacity to improve other aspects of life. Kennedy pointed out that walkable neighborhoods can be recognized in housing prices.
“And the answer to why is it expensive to live in uptown or near lower Greenville or near Bishop Arts is not a problem of those places,” Kennedy said. “It is that there’s not enough of them. There’s not enough uptowns and not enough Bishop Arts, there are not enough lower Greenvilles throughout the city.”
While Dallas is working to improve pedestrian safety through initiatives like Vision Zero, they require continued investment and community involvement, Kennedy said. His continued hope for the city to improve is motivated by the movement for parking reform nationwide.
“I wish we were leaders on this but we’re not. But there’s enough examples now where we can be followers,” Kennedy said.